National Let's All Eat Right Day

Let’s All Eat Right Day encourages everyone to focus on nutrition and healthy eating habits. Food fuels work, play, rest, and everything in between, and small choices made consistently can add up to big changes in energy, mood, and long-term health.

Celebrating Let’s All Eat Right Day involves more than just eating healthy for one day. It’s about committing to long-term changes that include incorporating more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins into meals.

It also invites people to notice patterns: Are meals balanced, or are they mostly quick carbs? Is water the default drink, or sugary beverages? Are snacks doing any real nutritional work, or just filling time?

How to Celebrate the Day:

- Bring people together for a bright, cheerful potluck where color is the theme. Invite friends or family and ask each person to prepare a dish built around vibrant fruits or vegetables. Food color often hints at the nutrients inside. Orange foods like carrots and sweet potatoes are rich in carotenoids. Dark leafy greens commonly provide folate, vitamin K, and magnesium. Purple and blue foods such as berries or purple cabbage contain plant compounds with antioxidant properties. A table full of color naturally encourages variety, without anyone needing to track numbers or rules.

- Wander through a farmers market- Seasonal fruits and vegetables often taste better. Markets also introduce ingredients that don’t always appear in everyday grocery shopping, like unusual greens, heirloom beans, or lesser-known squash varieties which is an opportunity to try something new.

- Challenge yourself to try a new food and/or new cooking method.

• Choose one hearty vegetable to roast (cauliflower, carrots, beets, squash)
• Choose one leafy green (for sautéing or adding to soup)
• Choose one protein (beans, fish, eggs, poultry, tofu, or lean meat)
• Choose one bright finishing touch (lemon, herbs, fresh salsa, yogurt sauce)

- Nutrition Education Session- Host a nutrition chat. Share practical facts about everyday foods, like how avocados provide unsaturated fats or how berries contain antioxidant plant compounds. Other topics:

• Fiber: found in beans, lentils, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and whole grains; supports fullness and digestion
• Protein: helps with repair and muscle health; comes from both animal and plant sources
• Healthy fats: add satisfaction and help absorb nutrients; found in foods like olives, avocado, nuts, and fatty fish
• Added sugar and sodium: often hidden in packaged foods, sauces, and drinks
• Hands-on activity such as label reading using items from the pantry, learning how to spot: Added sugars under different names, Sodium levels that climb quickly when several packaged foods are combined and portion sizes that change how “healthy” a snack really is.

- Try a New Recipe- Cook something new and nourishing. Choose recipes that feel exciting but not complicated, such as a quinoa salad with roasted vegetables, smoothie bowl topped with fruit and nuts, grain bowls with roasted vegetables, beans, and a lemon-tahini dressing, sheet-pan meals with a lean protein and two vegetables, seasoned with herbs and spices, soups built from onions, garlic, vegetables, and lentils, finished with leafy greens.